


Broken Promises, Hugs, Rain, and Sunflower Seeds on a Hot Day (Drabbles)

by Maidenjedi



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Drabble, Drabble Collection, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-15
Updated: 2012-07-15
Packaged: 2017-11-10 01:07:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,960
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/460537
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maidenjedi/pseuds/Maidenjedi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A bunch of XF drabbles written in 2009, filling several requests.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Broken Promises, Hugs, Rain, and Sunflower Seeds on a Hot Day (Drabbles)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [pauraque](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pauraque/gifts), [icedteainthebag](https://archiveofourown.org/users/icedteainthebag/gifts), [TLynn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TLynn/gifts), [memories_child](https://archiveofourown.org/users/memories_child/gifts).



For icedteainthebag, Scully/Reyes, hug

"You had a sister, didn't you?"

Everything comes out of her mouth like that. Bluntly, with little or no prelude. Scully likes that about her. She likes to think, I used to be like her. I used to tell it like it is, to hide nothing and ask the obvious questions.

She likes to think it, but it was never true, unless Mulder was there.

And he's not here, not anymore.

"I had a sister, yes." Common knowledge, really. Scully knows Monica read her files. She's an FBI agent after all.

"How would she have felt about this?"

Monica's eyes glow, giving away her intentions, letting Scully know she means to wound and batter and dig to the hard truths. Scully lets it "About what? Having a quest, a lost cause, the way he did for all those years?"

Tension charges the air like sudden lightning. Monica looks Scully nakedly, unashamed of what she demands to know. Scully looks back, half-pleading for a change in the subject matter. They had been talking about babies, and pregnancy, and how did it get to this?

You're carrying his child, aren't you? That baby is his.

Yes. And a child needs his father, don't you think?

But Mulder was dead in a field, and Scully still refused to mourn him. Monica had cut her a moment ago, asking what Missy might have thought.

Tears threaten and Scully's voice is choked with them as she says, "She would tell me if he had moved on. And she's not here to say that now. She's not here to tell me the truth."

Monica reaches out, her gaze more compassionate, more understanding. She kisses Scully's temple, a gesture many times rejected, but Scully is worn out. Mulder, in the field, pockmarked face and cold skin, is all she can see. Monica knows, she knows though she is never told, and smoothes Scully's hair away from her face.

She takes Scully in her arms, and the tension is gone, as though it was never there, and Scully relaxes and returns the embrace.

\----

For pauraque, who asked for Krycek/Marita, a hot day.

"I thought you said you knew the language."

"I said I knew a few phrases, that's all."

"Oh, but of course, not the right kind of phrases, you knew just enough to start an international incident!"

His wrists were still raw from the chains he'd worn in that blasted prison, and sweat was no longer dripping so much as flooding off of her face. They made such a sight, a couple of Westerners in foreign territory, that they might have gotten out without incident just because no one could be bothered with them. But Alex had to go and say something a little off-color in dialect of Arabic that was apparently offensive to the ears of these men, and now Marita was standing between him and three pissed off natives with guns. 

She really resented standing between any man and a gun, but especially Alex Krycek.

She tried some Russian, and then French. A half-assed try at a different Arabic dialect, one she was sure would get her shot in other places, got them to lower their weapons.

They had another mile to walk to the airstrip, and Marita recognized quickly that Alex's slurs had ruined any chance at a ride. She unbuttoned her blouse.

"If you think you're getting any after all the shit...."

"Shut the hell up, Alex. I don't want any." She took off her blouse and tied it around her waist. Luckily they were in a region less concerned with female modesty, but she wouldn't have done it if she hadn't had on a camisole. Alex, despite his declaration, looked at her like a cat stares at cream.

Another life, maybe. In this one, she was hot and tired and pissed off, and her only goal was to get herself and Alex on the first plane out of this place, so they could get back to the smoking man and whatever his newest scheme was.

And then, if Alex didn't screw it up, they would kill him.

\--

For tlynnfic, Mulder/Scully, broken promises

They were supposed to be at Skinner's office by ten for their latest dressing-down, but Mulder was determined to get to the bottom of his partner's latest foray into danger.

Well, it was her only foray into danger, at least in terms of putting herself there. It was usually his own fault Scully sported bruises or scrapes on her face, or had to be hospitalized for something. And he refused to believe that this time it was his fault. After all, he hadn't even been there.

"It's my life, Mulder."

"Yes, but it's my...." And damnit, he couldn't finish the sentence. He was trying to find a way to yell at her, to take shots at her impossibly cool demeanor, and now she just sat looking at him, her eyes defying him to finish that sentence.

He gave up, got up, and left, trying not to care if she followed him up to Skinner's office or not. But of course she did, and she answered all of Skinner's questions about Ed Jerse and the fire and the tattoos. Not that anything Skinner asked really got down to it. Not that Skinner could know what Mulder blamed Scully for.

Words haunted Mulder, they carried weight. He had once told Scully he could trust only her, and she had returned that. And now she was going off with strange men and letting them talk her into...he didn't want to think about it.

Back in the office, Scully announced that she was hungry and was going to order food, did Mulder want anything? He ignored her, trying to think of what he wanted to say to her and not one bit concerned about food.

She ordered a vegetarian pizza, and holed up as best she could at the workspace in the corner, studying a paper on DNA testing and letting Mulder stew in his juices. She had to know, he thought. She had to care.

Didn't she?

The pizza arrived and Mulder paid for it, a habit long established and therefore nearly impossible to break, and he even took a slice and made a lame joke about rabbit food. He watched in astonishment as Scully ate three slices almost without taking a breath, and lost his appetite. Who was this woman?

They worked in the same room the rest of the day, Mulder answering phones and Scully occasionally offering an opinion, both of them studying and trying to ignore the other. That's how Mulder saw it, anyway. In truth, Scully was not ignoring Mulder - she was thinking about him, and considering how to make the first move of reconciliation.

At six, they stood up almost simultaneously, stretched, reached for jackets and umbrellas. There was a synchronization to their movement that frightened people who didn't know them and came as a matter of course to those who did. They walked to the elevator in step, and Scully got in first.

As soon as the door closed behind Mulder, she spoke.

"Do you want to see it, Mulder?"

Had he been drinking anything, it would have come out his nose.

"I trust you, Mulder. I'll show you the tattoo, if you want."

Her voice had no hesitation, though it was shy and quiet. Mulder was tempted to hit the emergency stop button to question her, but he let it go. She was serious.

"I know you think I broke a promise to you, Mulder. I know you see this whole thing as a breach of trust. I want to show you, it's not about you. It was, and is, about me."

He sighed, and his shoulders slumped as they reached the floor that led to the garage. He didn't know if she really understood him, why he was hurt, why this mattered. But then, he was no longer sure himself.

They walked out into the garage. Their cars were in the same row, and were among only a dozen or so left on that floor. Scully stopped at Mulder's car, pointedly waiting for him to open the door for her.

"Scully, you don't...."

"Shut up, Mulder." She covered his mouth with her hand, gently, and stood on tiptoe as far as she could to kiss him. 

He had to meet her halfway.

 

\--

For memories_child, Mulder/Scully, rain and sunflower seeds

They had been on worse trips, certainly. That first one in Bellefleur (you can't beat losing your evidence to a freak motel fire), that "nice trip to the forest," Eugene Tooms and his bile. There was a laundry list of bad trips, ridiculous cases, dirt and goo and monkey poo. But Scully wasn't thinking much beyond being pissed off at having to walk two miles on a dirt road in high heels, in torrential spring rain, just to find a gas station in the land where "last chance for fuel, next chance 60 miles" was practically the state motto.

Her only consolation was that Mulder was walking with her, and he was just as wet as she was.

"Another half mile, Scully."

"You said that a mile ago, Mulder."

But he was right, just another half mile and they came up to Bill's Texaco, and it looked like Bill was inside.

It wasn't Bill, but Lorraine, and she exclaimed over the wet pair and found them some paper towels to dry off with. 

"Our car has a flat about two and a half miles down the road, and it didn't have a spare. Any chance we could call a tow truck?"

"Only tow truck round here is out on FM 2643; bridge went out, Lloyd Russell's Caddy landed nose first into the mud. We ain't had rain in awhile, and this gullywasher made the creeks swell up like proud horny toads. You're welcome to wait, though. Ain't none of us goin' nowhere in this rain."

Scully sighed, inwardly she hoped, and asked where the bathroom was. "Round back. Here's the key." 

Mulder, meanwhile, perused the store's slim pickings, quickly finding what he wanted. The bag of sunflower seeds cost him all of fifty-nine cents plus tax, and even a wet dollar bill is accepted in Bill's Texaco.

"Keep the change."

Lorraine did, with no snide comebacks, and Mulder shared a handful of the seeds with her.

Scully came back looking much fresher, though still wet for the most part. The hand dryer in the restroom had helped.

They stood waiting for a full hour before Bill came with the tow truck. In that time, they learned the names of all sixteen of Lorraine's grandchildren, and about how she thought Bill needed to get married and quick (he was a young fifty-six, and Lorraine was determined to find him a young lady). They knew that Lloyd Russell drank and Caddy Wannamaker was his girl sometimes. They learned about all five of the churches in the area, which wasn't really a town so much as a loose bunch of homes and farms and bait shops, and they knew to stay away from the Pentecostals out on Route 2. "Snake handlers, that's what they are," said Lorraine, a lifelong member of Second Baptist on the farm-to-market road a mile southwest. 

Scully, to Mulder's utter bewilderment, took some of his sunflower seeds and asked Lorraine where she could get some new shoes.

They made it to the "big city" and had to take a red-eye to make it back before Kersh really missed them, but the rain and the sunflower seeds (and Lorraine, really) had smoothed over any ill will. Scully slept with her head on Mulder's shoulder on the plane.

\---


End file.
